Michael Zislis, the iconoclastic head of The Zislis Group, Inc., a consortium of restaurants and hotels all over the South Bay and elsewhere, admits to being something of a delinquent as an adolescent.
?I wanted to make alcohol (because) I thought that would be kind of cool at 13,? he said last week in the haphazard craziness of his Manhattan Beach conference room, a place strewn with blue prints, binders, photos of a new chain of restaurants?and, oh yes, a magazine cover of Zislis and two of his rock star partners, the legendary Gene Simmons of Kiss and tour promoter Dave Furano.??
To deceive his parents as to what was steaming up their Rolling Hills Estates kitchen, Zislis, 47, called his project?one culled from a mail order home brewing kit he?d seen advertised in Popular Science while at the orthodontist?a science experiment.
?You had to boil bottles; you had to boil malt,? said the entrepreneur who is nothing if not rippling with exuberance. ?It was a little too advanced for my parents to understand. So it looked like a science experiment and we sold it as a science experiment. But we were just really home brewing.?
By the time he got to USC, where he majored in economics due to the influence of famed economist Arthur Laffer, his ?mentor? and next door neighbor in Rolling Hills Estates, young Zislis had evolved into a master brewer.
"Beer is just a passion of mine," Zislis explained. "I love beer.?
Only one problem: ?I?ve always hated school,? he said, breaking into his happy-go-lucky grin, an expression that, taken with his super-casual attire, jeans and polo shirt, makes him appear younger than his years. ?School is all rules and regulations. I don?t like rules. I don?t like to answer to anybody.?
So he dropped out of USC and started his own consulting business, a brash young kid telling a lot of older people how to make beer and launch breweries. ?It?s not that I knew everything about it. It?s just that I had more knowledge than anybody else,? he said.
So the man whose ventures would quickly grow to include Rock?N Fish Manhattan Beach (as well as Laguna and L.A. Live), Brewco, The Strand House, Circa and Shade, a luxury hotel, decided to start his own brewery.
He went straight to his family, a story in itself.
George and Rose Zislis already had five biological children when they ?were kind and gracious enough? to adopt four more, including Compton-born Michael, who was three days old when his parents brought him home to Rolling Hills Estates.
?My father was a physician, a cardiologist,? Zislis said of the late George Zislis, whose gold watch he wears. ?And my mother was a crazy housewife. I say ?crazy? because can you imagine having nine kids in one house? I have four in my house right now, and my wife and I are losing it every day.?
Zislis and his wife Andrea live in Manhattan Beach with their children, two boys and two girls, ages 5, 3, and 18-month-old twins. He also has two children by a previous marriage.
In the end, ?the Zislis family; my brother (David); my best friend from high school; the (Larry) Mizells, who own Lamppost Pizza up on (Rolling Hills Road)?everybody gave me money to open Manhattan Beach Brewing Company.?
Old enough to brew beer, but not to drink it
With 13 investors, Zislis, just 20 at the time, applied for and got his liquor license. ?Believe it or not, there?s no law that you have to be 21," he said. "So it was very odd to be able to get a (liquor) license to be able to brew beer, but I?m not legally allowed to drink.?
He soon had additional pubs and manufacturing facilities overseas: ?I had offices in Torrance. Brewery equipment. I had factories in Budapest, Prague; we built breweries all around the world, about 150 of them.?
Nothing about Michael Zislis falls into the ordinary category.
One of his Rock & Brews partners, Dave Furano of Manhattan Beach, attested to that when he dropped by the office for a chat.
?I have been working with rock stars all my life,? said Furano, a tour manager for the Rolling Stones, Kiss, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, The Doors, the Allman Brothers, George Harrison and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. ?And Michael Zislis is a rock star beyond his own imagination.?
But when Furano approached Zislis about opening a restaurant with him in El Segundo, Zislis declined. ?Look,? he told Furano, ?I don?t do partnerships.?
The other problem for Zislis?who calls Manhattan Beach and the like ?paradise??was the location: El Segundo. ?The town, let?s face it, it?s between a Chevron refinery and a sewer plant, you know? But then you come to find out it?s probably one of the neatest cities; it?s like Mayberry by The Sea, everybody knows everybody,? Zislis recalled.
It took a few rock concerts to finally convince Zislis: ?I got to see Van Halen up front, and we go to a Kiss show, and we have this great time and I love rock and roll ? And so I said, 'Let?s do it.'?
Having promised the city council that he would get ?a rock star? to design and operate Rock & Brews, Furano was thrilled. ?We started experimenting with the best of the best of all of Michael?s restaurants,? the promoter said. ?We took a little bit from this and a little bit from that and made this wonderful beer garden.?
Rock & Brews is currently expanding nationwide, with locations set for Riviera Village in Redondo Beach; Los Cabos, Mexico; Hawaii; Kansas City; Denver; and Los Angeles International Airport.?
Plus, Kiss singer/songwriter/entrepreneur Gene Simmons and fellow band member Paul Stanley wanted in on the action. ?I was kind of afraid they would brand it a Kiss restaurant,? Zislis said. ?Not at all. They wanted to pay homage to all the great rock and roll (stars). They?re the biggest fans of the Who, and Rush and Van Halen...?
Gene Simmons is 'a genius'
Zislis also found Simmons, whose mother was a Holocaust survivor, to be ?tireless. And he?s a genius,? he added. ?He designs the colors, the logos; this guy just has a talent. He?s not just a rock star, he?s a business mogul.?
No less can be said of Zislis, a man whose sense of timing is exceeded only by his willingness to take risks. After abandoning the brewery business when the tap beer trade wore the novelty off brew pubs (?I have the same passion, but I?ve moved away from making the beer to selling the beer,? he explained), he introduced Rock?N Fish, a seafood and steakhouse in Manhattan Beach.
The transition from pubs to restaurants was a natural one because Zislis had gotten into food in the initial stages of his brewery. ?The first week you came into Manhattan Beach Brewery, the food was probably pretty bad," he said. "But within a year or two, we were really good at it; we understood it. We knew how to buy. We got to travel a little bit, spend a little of money and go to great restaurants, so we were able to really upgrade the food.?
Now he believes his restaurants exceed the norm. ?When you come to a Rock & Brews or a Rock?N Fish or a Strand House or a Shade (Hotel), I have real high standards," Zislis explained. "The bread?s got to be baked every day; the meat has to be certified Angus beef, never frozen; everything?s got to be the highest quality.?
The same applied to the now-defunct Mucho Ultima Mexicana. ?That was my saddest moment,? Zislis said. ?It?s not everyday you win Zagat?s ?Third Best Mexican Restaurant? and then close it. Just didn?t make money. It was something I couldn?t change. Nobody spends $30 on a Chilean sea bass with papita crust. They buy the taco platter for $12.?
Retaining all the staff, he replaced Mucho Ultima with Circa. ?It?s just all the great food of L.A.," Zislis said about the new restaurant. "Everything true to form. Italian food is Italian; the French food is French; the Basque food is Basque.?
If this lively restaurateur who suffers no lack of confidence ever experienced a qualm or two, it came in 2004, when he transformed an urban revitalization project in Manhattan Beach into a luxury boutique hotel, Shade.?
?I wanted to open a restaurant at Metlox Plaza,? he said. ?The city said no. And then they said, ?We do have a hotel site that nobody wants if you?d like to think about a hotel.?
?I was so successful at Rock?N Fish I thought, I can do a hotel. Which was probably a mistake.?
The ordeal, which delayed his wedding, took almost four years. ?It was very hard on me to build it, design it and get it open,? he said. Where a restaurant is basically a matter of designing a kitchen and a dining room, he said, Shade required 60 different designs.?
?Nine different guest rooms; all the penthouses were custom ? a bakery, a lobby, a front desk, a conference room, a courtyard, a sky deck... The list went on forever."
But the hotel, for which his in-laws to be Milo and Damira Bacic of Rancho Palos Verdes put up half the money, ended up being successful.?
One of the trendiest hotels
Named one of the top 25 trendiest hotels in the U.S. by Trip Advisor, Shade was listed as Conde Nast Traveler?s No. 6 reason to visit Los Angeles. A second Shade will be built in Redondo Beach on Harbor Drive; deconstruction has started on the old Red Onion restaurant. Materials from the restaurant's deconstruction will be used to build bed frames and the like for the new hotel.
Zislis finally did find the time to tie the knot with Andrea Bacic, who he met 13 years ago when she was a hostess at the San Pedro Brewing Company. He was on the verge of moving to Manhattan Beach to open Rock?N Fish at the time.
?We opened Rock?N Fish together,? he said.?
The wedding took place at their favorite winery in Napa Valley, Quintessa. ?We conceived on our wedding night, I like to say,? Zislis added, the characteristic smile blooming on his face. ?And now, four kids later, we?re married six years.?
The people who work for and with him are much like an extended family. ?I get to work with all these different investors, different managers and different staff, and everybody loves the industry,? said Zislis, whose zest for life infects the air at Zislis Group headquarters, a gray-shingled office complex three blocks from the ocean. ?Kristina, my assistant?she literally runs my life.?
An intern when she started at Zislis Group, Kristina Baskovic is both executive assistant and ?project manager of all my construction,? he said.
A believer in moving people laterally if no chance for advancement is possible at a restaurant or hotel, Zislis explained how Katie Richardson went from a front desk manager at Shade to ?VP of my whole company? at 32 or 33: ?She got that role, not because of some school degree she had?I don?t believe in any of that. She just had the ability; she rose to the top.?
A few days before the interview, Zislis said, one of his former construction workers showed up at his door, broke and out of work. ?It must have been really hard for him to come to my door," Zislis said. "But now he?s over in Redondo Beach working on the new Rock & Brews. I put him to work the next day.?
Zislis makes an effort to be empathetic. ?It?s a hard world we?re living in,? he said.
Living in the South Bay, however, is not at all hard: ?We all know this is the best place in the world. I mean the South Bay, it?s just a treat to live here ? paradise. We?re just fortunate enough to have great schools (and) such great hospitals. That?s what I spend my time and charity work on, Torrance Memorial Hospital.?
Well known as a philanthropist, Zislis also supports local schools, regularly donating food from his restaurants for educational events. And local breweries get his assistance as well as his business.
?I really help these young guys with their little breweries, because I know how hard it is,? he said.
For more information on Zislis Group holdings, including restaurant and hotel locations, visit the website.
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